More vendors reverse Y2K

From Computerworld dated Aug. 3
The number of software products reversing their Y2K-ready status is going up, not down, according to one year 2000 compliance-tracking firm.

In July, vendors for half of the 125 software products evaluated
made "negative" changes (58%) to their Y2K-ready status. That means the manufacturer has discontinued Y2K support or has released previously unknown Y2K issues.

That's much higher than the 33% average for this year and was unexpected because more businesses are nearing the final stages of year 2000 remediation, said officials at Infoliant Corp., a Pittsburgh-based Y2K compliance-tracking firm.

I am not surprised. It is very expensive to support older versions
of software. Y2K is a good reason to dump older product lines...
particularly if the remediation costs are high. It also helps cover
one's legal backside when a company formally announces it will not
support a product in advance of Y2K. This way, the company can say,
"Hey, we told you it wouldn't work."

it appears that contractual Y2K lawsuits simply aren't going to be a
big-money business, according to attorney Tobey Marzouk of Washington
D.C.'s Marzouk & Parry, one of the world's foremost law firms dealing
in high technology law and litigation. Marzouk notes that three years
ago Y2K litigation was the hot topic at legal conferences, but lately
"the level of interest has plummeted," he says. The cases simply
aren't holding up in court. "In most cases, the warranty on
non-compliant software ran out years ago," Marzouk explains, "and
almost all contracts are covered by statutes of limitations."
That's been the experience at Mountain View-based Intuit, which,
being responsible for Quicken, could be a likely target. "Intuit
has a basic philosophy that we do right by our customers," says Intuit
spokesman
Jeff Larsen, "and we've made every effort to bring all current
versions of our software to Y2K compliance." It appears that
Intuit has been going beyond the call of duty. Earlier this year, the
Santa Clara Superior Court dismissed three Y2K-related lawsuits filed
against the company with regard to the Y2K readiness of the online
banking functionality of certain versions of Quicken. (The Supreme
Court of New York dismissed three similar lawsuits at the end of
1998.) "It's market-driven," says Marzouk. "Vendors are simply
giving away their Y2K fixes," which shows more good faith than may be
contractually required.

Come on now, don't be an MVS head! 1 in 160? Of the 50,000 IBM mainframes, and who knows how many others, like Amdahl, Hitachi, etc. that run a mainframe OS, I would DARE to say, that the number that runs VSE, or the VM/VSE combo, is at least a 5 digit number. Can't say if it's 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 and don't have tie time to find a link. Try SHARE maybe.

Get real. SMEs run small and medium mainframes. Many of these run VM/VSE. I got one, the co. on the second floor has one, my backup site has one, my former employeer has 3!

Nothing personal Deano, but not everybody is an OS/390 shop. Not everybody is a fortune 500 company.
-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.

Oh, and Deano,

I've been playing with an IBM P/390, you know, the "mainframe on a chip" that plugs into a PCI slot. Guess what OS I'm running? Hint, it starts with VM/... Yea, It could run OS/390, but hey, we got a history...
-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.

And everyone,

Since we have some comments on "discontinued Y2K support," what about the other half, "or has released previously unknown Y2K issues" ???

How much of that 58% is due to previously unknown issues? 1% of it? Na, wouldn't be worth the mention. 10% ... 25% ... half of that 58% ???

I am curious to see what your findings are. Some of our customers are huge, but a lot of them are small (20,000 loans or less). They would seem the best candidates for this type system, but most seem to be on an AS400 platform of something of that nature.